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I have a self-managed portfolio with a few stocks in it, which I keep at Scottrade and track with a program called StockMarketEye. I've used a few other portfolio trackers as well, and they all seem to have the same problem - either that or I'm doing it wrong =o)

My problem is this:

Say I buy Stock A at $10 and ride it up to $100.
Then I sell Stock A and buy Stock B at $10 and ride it up to $100.
Then I sell Stock B and buy Stock C at $10. Stock C falls to $9.

Since Stock A and B are no longer in my portfolio, they no longer show gains. So now all I'm showing is that I own a bunch of Stock C at a 10% loss, even though my portfolio is way up overall. This is discouraging.

I understand that it's important to know how your current stocks are doing, but I sort of feel like if I bought Netflix at $28 and then Tesla around $35 (I did both), the positions I've sold should still show up somewhere so I can see that "Oh, my current stock holdings are down 10%, but my overall portfolio is way up for the money that I've invested.

For some reason, I don't seem to be able to find software that will do that for me, even though it seems like it would be a no-brainer.

Does anyone know what I should be looking for in software, or how to get that sort of report?

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  • I would talk to Scottrade support. I would be surprised if they don't have a historical portfolio tracker as you describe. I know that Schwab does.
    – rhaskett
    Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 20:55
  • Good idea, but unfortunately, some of these stocks were purchased before moving the portfolio to Scottrade.
    – Eli
    Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 21:08
  • I always assumed the "total value of holdings" was a good indicator of my current success :)
    – Joe
    Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 21:11
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    Why don't you just create your own spread sheet which you can have a starting capital, current balance, percentage gain/loss, open trade value, etc. and trace all your open and closed trades. You can also have other information on there such as stop loss levels (if you use them).
    – Victor
    Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 21:14

1 Answer 1

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You could create your own spreadsheet of Cash Flows and use the XIRR function in Excel:

Date     |    CF
------------------
1/1/2014     -1000   // Bought Netflix
2/25/2014     1500   // Sold Netflix for profit
4/1/2014     -1500   // Bought Ford
6/30/2014     1800   // Sold Ford for profit
6/30/2014    -1800   // Bought Google
6/30/2014     -300   // Bought Twitter
12/24/2014     250   // Sold Twitter for loss
12/25/2014    3000   // Sold Google for profit
------------------
XIRR:       103.2%

The formula is:

=XIRR(values, dates, [guess])
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